Before the Ever After
by Bonenzone
Summary: A dark and twisted fairy tale world. Bonnie was raised in this darkness, it was the company she kept in the brothel she called her home. One night a prince enters and sets about a sequence of events that will eventually lead to tragedy. Heavy angst, Bonenzo, AU.


_AN: This is a reworked story I did for another fandom. It's pretty dark but there is the potential for a multi-chap fic in this universe._

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Not all princes are as noble as the stories would have you believe.

Some are ruthless and uncaring with blackened hearts of coal, little more than ash. Some have hands that have taken a life, and others have those who have taken lives for them. Some are given everything they could want, while others take that which belongs to no man.

The classic dichotomy of good and evil had blurred generations ago. There were no heroes here. Heroes were a thing of legends - whispers told to the young cloaking tales of caution. They were stories, regurgitated from parent to child, until they became a sickly sweet mess of lies, ended abruptly with an unobtainable 'happily ever after'. Our world was quick to strip the lustre from these stories. With age and hardship they revealed themselves for what they truly were as reality bore evidence that a hero with a bow and arrow was no match for a villain.

Oh yes, there were villains. Even without heroes, without stories, there were villains. Villains didn't need weaponry; they didn't need anything other than motivation and time. Most importantly though, they needed victims. Victims were the fuel to feed that insatiable thirst that plagued them. They were their sport and their entertainment through the long and arduous days, where man fought to live past thirty against every element this unrelenting world could throw at him and where beasts sold their souls for eternity.

I was all too familiar with villains. They were the company I kept in my darkened part of the kingdom. The seedy side, where rouge and eyeliner were used to cover the marks of an overzealous client. Where each woman in this house took care of what the men tired of taking from their familiar wives. Our reward? A scarlet letter and a tarnished reputation for our service to the community. Our home was a haven to the scourge of the earth between dusk and dawn. The unkind daylight hours exposing the dark circles under our eyes and washed out complexions that rarely saw sun. This home belonged to them, the men who watched us as pieces of meat, slowly taking a part of us with them every time they did up their belt buckles.

But it was my home, my life, and here I lay in the familiar alleyway outside of my sanctuary, with only these thoughts to keep me company while slowly farewelling the shell of a body that had held me captive these twenty-something years.

Death was more uncomfortable than I had predicted, although not as painful as the alternative of life. The living were always cautious of death, a tension they unknowingly carried with them always. There was a peace in releasing yourself from such constrictions, an ease. It was an escape from a world that had never welcomed me in the first place, and now I was finally able to turn my back on it.

A chill had settled itself deep within my body that I had never felt before as I lay near-naked on the gravel and dirt that carpeted the ground. Had I the strength, I would roll myself off of the broken arm I was laying on and let the stars of the night sky be my last visions of this earth. Instead, I was forced to lay exposed to the world, blanketed in a pool of my own blood and covered in barely anything more than the marks of their hands and the cuts of their knives. I was dying the way I had lived. Alone, unprotected - every flaw I owned on display.

I had envisioned my death many times and this scenario was far from surprising. It went hand in hand with the line of work I had committed myself to. From tragic beginnings to tragic ends. Such was the story of Bonnie Bennett.

But there had been hope, buried amongst the melancholy. The reason I was able to actually live the last three years, having numbed myself to the world before that. The reason I wanted to feel, instead of shutting myself off to all emotion, and the reason I clung to this world now instead of going gently into the light.

It was you.

I still remember the first time I saw you in our home of garish red velvet and imported wallpaper. It was charmingly obvious you didn't belong. Dark features on a pure and pale canvas, a stark contrast to the others who frequented these parts. The ones who bathed as occasionally as they let a kind word pass their lips. But you, you were different, as you stood speaking with our matron, your eyes burning through my own even from the other side of the room.

 _"I want her."_

Looking back it would seem that from that moment on you had me - not that I knew it at the time. Neither of us spoke those first few visits. Words led to pleasantries which then led to familiarity and comfort. Comfort led to questions and questions lead to answers. Answers meant that I would lose myself to you completely and part of my job was to separate my reality from yours.

Instead we fucked.

Or at least, I tried. But sex with you wasn't sex. It was fire and energy and light. You were light. A light that I hadn't known existed in my time on this God forsaken plane. Each thrust extended through my limbs, each groan melted into my bones and each taste of your skin made me crave you more as my hips buckled with you deep inside of me.

I never told you, but you were the only man who was able to do that to me. The only man who was ever able to make my body convulse violently in that way, and the only one who was able to show me the beauty in an act that I had come to think of as mundane as brushing my hair.

And that was still before our introductions.

To this day you never actually told me your name but I, like everyone else in this kingdom, knew it as well as my own. Prince Lorenzo St. John IV. Next in line to rule this farce of a monarchy, handed down to you from parents who died before you had the chance to know them. The kingdom adored you, raising you as their own. You were a son to all and a brother to many. To me you were merely a whisper not meant for my ears. 'The orphaned prince', who gave his people hope and made a fellow orphan feel less alone in her circumstances, although very aware that your auspicious beginnings did not mirror her own.

Yet here you were, all these years later, not my son or my brother, but _my_ Enzo, sneaking away from your duties. You ventured into the sordid side of town, under the cloak of night to rent my body for an entire evening. But you got more than just my body, you got everything. Even in silence, I gave you everything. Everything I could.

In your absence I was able to escape into a new world as I let the others pollute the flesh that I distanced myself from when it was not your skin on mine. The old world was of childhood memories, long gone relatives and those few I had called friends. The new world of escapism though, this was built on recent memories. Your soft, pale hands gripping the bronzed body beneath you, my back arched in pleasure with your head resting on my chest and the warmth from your breath that sent a current over my skin whenever your lips were near.

And all of this with nothing but silence between us.

It was after the first year that you said your very first words to me. Your breath grazing my cheek bones as I took in that familiar scent of aged bourbon and fragrant hair gel.

"I'm in love with you."

And with those words my world fell apart. Spoken with the accent reserved for royalty, carefully enunciated words that were never meant for an abandoned wretch like myself and yet it was as if they were only just created for you to present them to me like a gift.

It was also the first time anybody had ever said them to me.

Before that moment I had resigned myself to live day by day when suddenly I was privy to a future I was never destined for. You were the hero of my stories, my own personal saviour, in a world where faith and hope and magic all co-existed. But you were promised to the Queen of a neighbouring kingdom. An older woman - a widow who bore two sons who were constantly at war with one another. I had heard of your betrothal through those in the respectable parts of the kingdom. The wealthier ones, the ones who thrived in the sunlight and spoke like gentlefolk. Those who knew their place in society and would never put a man in his place with the 4-inch heel of their shoe shoved into his crotch. Those who branded my kind with our scarlet letters and those who would never welcome me into their world – least of all with their prince at my side.

So I took your words and kept them in my heart, but I refused to let them leave my own mouth, even if I meant them more than any truth I had ever spoken. You were too good, never once pressing me for more than I was ready to give. You would tell me stories of your day, your home, your cousins, the battle scars on your arms, your everything. Even tales of the warring Salvatore princes in the kingdom you were destined to unite us with. You taught me various songs - your passion - and I often drifted to sleep with you singing softly into my hair. You shared with me because you wanted me to be as much a part of your life as I could. I appreciated it more than I could ever articulate.

Then your monthly visits became weekly as you found some excuse to give them back at the palace, slipping out to spend your nights with me. I started to share my stories with you and you hung off of every last word, asking follow up questions with a hunger to find out all you could. It was disarming at first, but then it became too easy for me to confide in you as you drew patterns with your fingers across my skin and held me protectively in your arms, as if you could still fight battles that were long passed.

But you couldn't always protect me. Even if you offered with every weekly visit.

"Run away with me, my love. We can start a life somewhere that my name means nothing, one where you'll no longer have to work in this hell hole of a home. Come with me, where I can hold you always, and share you with no other."

I smiled. I always smiled, and you always answered the same way.

"I long for the day that smile reaches your eyes, my darling. A day when you don't completely break my heart."

You asked me every week for over a year until two months prior to this very day. Then it became daily, as you paid my rates for the entire week. You were warned by those who watched over you to stay away from my part of town, there were whispers starting due to your increased visits and your nuptials were fast approaching. You didn't care. As much as I told you to be careful, you didn't care. You continued to ask for my hand with stories of how our life could be. I continued to decline your offer of a fairy tale.

Of course I wanted to say yes. God, how deeply I wanted it. Every time I sat in silence it broke my own heart, but I would not be responsible for stealing you away from the life you were born into. I could share you with her, as you had to share me once. I knew that what we had was too strong for there to be any connection with your new bride. I knew from experience.

So I denied the fantasy we shared of life in a tiny cabin hidden away deep in the woods, where we spent our days making music together and raising hordes of little ones. Girls who were bold and brave, like their mother, with strong and charming gentlemen, like their father. I denied the fantasy because I was scared. I was too scared to accept that so much good could come to one the world had repeatedly violated.

And then I didn't see you for a whole week and that week hurt me more than the physical pain I was suffering through now. Without a word you were gone, and all I could do was wait until the next night with the hopes that you hadn't finally figured out how hopeless our situation was and given up on me.

I looked for you in everything. That horrible cheap bourbon you love, the scent of you on my pillow... I waited up through the day as well as the night, sleeping upright for short bursts at a time. I looked for you in everything, but you were nowhere to be found.

And then last night you came. You came back to me and I started to drown in every part of you. I leapt into your arms and you grabbed onto me wrapping your warmth around mine and kissing whatever your lips could find.

"I'm sorry, my love. I had to make plans. The wedding is tomorrow and I refuse to tell another I will be hers forever when we both know that I am yours. I know you've rejected my offer a thousand times - maybe more - but I still live in hope. Tomorrow at dawn, I shall be waiting for you. Tomorrow at dawn - if you accept my offer - shall be the start of our new life together."

You were there in my arms and although I could feel you, your words made no sense. You were giving up all you had for, me? Me? I was nothing but a common whore, worthy of no man and wanted by all. You were a prince, even if you had made it all too easy to forget whenever we were together. You were destined for greater things than a life in a tiny wood cabin with me.

A life that we could build alongside one another. A life where I could be free of my sordid history and you both the responsibilities of a loveless marriage and duties to an ungrateful kingdom.

A life...together.

"Yes." I whispered into your neck. You pulled away, holding my face between your hands.

"What?" You asked, begging for my answer.

"I will be there - waiting for you."

"I..." You started, your eyes glistening at my response as you could barely contain your excitement, "I...have to go! I have to. They're already suspicious enough of my whereabouts. I will be back tomorrow though, my love. Tomorrow our life together will begin."

You kissed me with a pure, unadulterated love that burned through my lips, my neck, my body, right down to my feet, and I held you as closely as I could, not wanting to let go. The kiss was too short though as you ran from my arms, turning one final time to smile excitedly at me as you left the door.

I packed and I sang as I did it, a song you had taught me in fact, and I farewelled those left behind in the life I was abandoning. I was prepared to leave too early but I was done with this house. It had taken me in and kept me off the streets, but the price was far too steep now that I had a choice, now that I knew what love really was. Had that scared and starving teen known love like this from an early age, she would never have sought refuge in this place.

Standing outside , awaiting my hero, I didn't even notice the villain lurking in the shadows. It was not unusual to see such a figure waiting out in this very alleyway, but soon that person multiplied into three and all three men approached from either side.

I was day dreaming of you and that cabin when I was grabbed.

And now I lay in this tragic tableau, as lonely as I was in life. Sheltered by nothing, and cared for by no one.

But there was one. One who tried. I spent a life time being empty, refusing to let love get too close, and yet here, in my darkest hour, it was that love that diluted the overwhelming terror that threatened to choke me in my final moments. It was the memories of Enzo, my Enzo, and our evenings spent in each other's arms from dusk 'til dawn.

Death was here now. The shaking in my body and the coldness of my bones was the announcement of her arrival. I would still not walk willingly towards her. She could collect me and carry my soul to wherever she wanted. I clung to this world because of him. Moments more of polluted air and vile scenery, just to replay the memory of the first time he told me he loved me one last time.

But she was a fighter. She pulled me and tugged at me and I finally began to give in.

And then I heard the voice of my angel, farewelling me from this plane, and I fought her off once again to stay.

"Bonnie! Bonnie, can you hear me?! Oh Christ, who did this to you? Who hurt you?!"

My prince's soft hands ran over my uncooperative body. Death had forbidden it to share with him the answers he seeked. Not that I could provide them anyway. I'm sure someone in your court would be able to answer that question for you. I hadn't even seen their faces. I never saw another man's face after I had had you. They all blurred together in the same stream of unshaven messes and unkempt hair. They didn't deserve my attention.

You though, you didn't deserve to watch me die.

"Bonnie, please...please...just wait. Wait for me. I can help. I'm so late but I can do, I can do something."

Your face was twisted in agony and streamed with tears. The fading humanity in me shed a tear of my own at your pain while you shook and thrashed my body in the hopes of some sort of response. I felt you force something passed my lips and into my mouth but I couldn't open my eyes if I tried. Instead I was ushered away from this place, listening to that sweet, melodic voice of yours as the last sounds from a world that had otherwise condemned me.

"No! Please, we were about to start a life together- finally...just the two of us. Together..."

But death insisted that I join her, and I fought no more.

I lay dying as I had lived my life. Loved too late, but loved in the end.


End file.
